


Tales of the unexpected visitor

by fawsley



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF!John, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-25
Updated: 2011-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-21 18:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fawsley/pseuds/fawsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock opens the door to a glimpse into John's past...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tales of the unexpected visitor

**Author's Note:**

> There will probably be more of this to come at a later date and if so I'll post it as a series, but for the moment it's sitting here as a one-off waiting for the muses to be kind.

‘Mrs Hudson!’

Still no response.

If he waited long enough, no doubt the unwanted caller would give up and go away.

But still there came another insistent knock upon the door.

 _’Mrs Hudson!’_

It was no good calling, he knew, but one could hope. One who was supine upon the sofa, eyes closed and brain engaged in formulating a particularly complex three-dimensional web of threads and clues which, if he abandoned them now, were certain to disintegrate into the sort of conclusion that kittens left behind them after having discovered the joys of a neglected basket of wool.

His mind hadn’t been the same since John went away.

And whomsoever it was standing on the fume-filled dust-laden Baker Street pavement didn’t seem inclined to go away in a hurry.

Swearing loudly and stomping to the very best of his ability whilst in bare feet, Sherlock made his way downstairs to the hallway.

‘I don’t care if you’re trying to sell me insurance, religion, double glazing or encyclopaedias…’

He wrenched the front door open and glared his strongest scariest glare at the intruder.

‘I’m not buying any of it. Especially the religion. And the encyclopaedias. And nobody in their right mind would ever insure me.’

‘Any chance with double glazing then?’

It took only seconds to appraise the figure standing on the doorstep.

‘Sorry to disturb you, I was actually looking for…’

‘Dr John Watson, yes, British Army Major, retired. You served together in Afghanistan. Several tours. You took a bullet, kneecap, very nasty, which is why you use the crutch. Unlike his, your injury isn’t psychosomatic. Enough to get you invalided out before your full duty was done. Watson tended to you under heavy fire, extremely dangerous, but cool and calm and totally controlled. You owe him your life but never had the chance to thank him before he too was injured. So now you’ve turned up on his doorstep unannounced and in person.’

‘Good. Very good. Perfect description of the Doc. Fiercer than a barrel-load of tigers that one, and wrecklessly brave. Steadiest hands I’ve ever seen in a war zone. Exactly who you need to be putting a bullet in. Or taking one out. But you’re totally wrong on what got me the limp. Though if the Doc had been there I might not have ended up with it, but there you go.’

Now here was a conundrum.

Sherlock wanted nothing more than to get back to untangling his own personal Gordian knot, but then again there was a stranger on his doorstep with more than a little of John’s past history to hand, the sort of past history that his flatmate had so far never cared to divulge. And totally wrong was not something Sherlock ever liked being. It was intriguing, tempting… It was a risk, but… He summoned up as much as he could remember of what John had tried to force-feed him about manners and being sociable.

‘He’s not here. Gone to Leeds. Medical conference or some such farce. Erm… Do you want a cup of tea? You can come in for it. Don’t have to wait out here.’

He could make tea, couldn’t he? He had before John had moved in to do it for him. But then again nobody else had ever wanted to drink it.

Sherlock bounded back up to the flat, the stranger stumping firmly up the stairs behind him.

‘So, what was it?’ he enquired, waiting for his guest to catch up, ‘If it wasn’t a bullet.’

Stump. Stump. Stump.

‘Training exercise in Nottingham, of all things. Served in Iraq, served in Afghanistan. Never got a scratch in either of ’em. Came home, sent training in the middle of winter, thick snow, deadly ice, went down with a full pack on my back, smashed both kneecaps. So that was me out of the game for good.’

Stump. Stump. Stump.

‘Aaahhh! That’s good!’

The stranger lowered himself into John’s armchair without a by-your-leave, but then carrying that sort of injury he had a right to.

Sherlock fussed with the kettle, only just remembered to warm the pot, couldn’t for the life of him remember where he’d last seen the teabags.

‘So where does John, I mean Doctor Watson, come in to all this?’

‘Well, you were half way there on that one.’

Sherlock’s scowl and harrumph at being only half way there on anything was lost upon his guest.

‘We did serve together, you were right there. Three tours in Afghanistan. He was an amazing soldier, an even more amazing medic. I’ve seen him perform miracles with nothing more than catgut and TCP when every lump and bump around him was a mine. Cool as a cucumber. He was a hero. No, more than a hero. He was a… What do you call it? Something you trust will keep you safe. Something you _know_ will keep you…’

‘Totem.’

‘Yes. That’s it, I think. If the Doc was there we all knew we’d be okay, that we’d always come out alive. I’ve never been able to trust one man as totally as I trusted the Doc. Never will again. With my life. Implicitly. He’s one of a kind.’

This man wasn’t as boring as Sherlock had feared he might be.

The kettle squealed on the hob and Sherlock leapt up to attend to it. There should be something else too, shouldn’t there? John would know. Something to eat, maybe. Something to go with tea…

‘Ah! Toast! We’ll make toast!’

And while the tea brewed in the squat Brown Betty beneath the jolly cosy knitted by Mrs Hudson’s own hands, Sherlock set to feeding the fire until it crackled into a roaring blaze that threatened the hearthrug and anything else within the vicinity.

Now what went with toast? Butter! And jam of course. Sherlock knew where that was. And other things too. Marmalade, Marmite, Gentleman’s Relish… Jars and pots clattered and clashed as the cupboard was raided for Sherlock’s idea of an impromptu feast.

‘Why now? Why come looking for John Watson now?’

‘Well, when I heard what had happened to him, to the Doc, of all people, I sort of felt… I just had to…’

‘So you tracked him down through your contacts with the Royal British Legion.’

‘How did you…?’

‘Lapel pin. You work for them. That’s how you obtained the right address.’

‘Shit… Christ I know it’s breaking all the rules of confidentiality and Data Protection, but somehow I just had to…’

‘Perfectly reasonable as far as I can see. What do you think of the honey?’

‘Honey? It’s… It’s…. Actually it’s bloody damned good!’

‘Thank you. Birthday present from John. The bees, that is.’

His guest threw Sherlock a quizzical glance.

‘Keep them up on the roof. London honey’s the best in the country. All the back gardens and massive parks, thousands of different species for them to feed on. Mine hang out in Regent’s Park, of course.’

‘Of course…’

The stranger took another enthusiastic bite of his toast and honey and chewed thoughtfully.

‘I’m glad…’ he finally managed, glancing curiously at his host.

‘Glad? Glad about what?’

‘About, well… About the Doc. And you. I didn’t think, after Chris… After all that… Didn't think there'd ever be anyone else...’

The Sherlock who had never known John Watson would have jumped down the man’s throat in order to drag out whatever it was the stranger wasn’t quite saying. As it was, this Sherlock had known John Watson and so sat on his hands (difficult, when there was hot buttered toast involved) and bit his tongue (ditto) and waited. It was perhaps the longest, hardest, most infuriating wait of his life. Why were ordinary people so stupid?

The stranger looked up at him, straight into the eyes.

‘I guess he hasn’t said much about it all, has he?’

Sherlock steeled himself to say nothing, which gave as much away as if he had.

‘I don’t know if I should, if he hasn’t…’

‘You’re eating my honey. Of course you should.’

Sherlock refilled his guest’s teacup and began piling far too much butter onto another piece of toast.

‘You were saying. Please continue.’

‘Well… Chris was our CO, our commanding officer. He and the Doc were… Well, you know. Close. More than close. Together. We all knew and well, these day’s it’s not an issue anyway, but even if it had been it wouldn’t have mattered. With those two guys on your side, well… They were the best. The best of the best. And we had both of them on our team. And they had each other.’

‘And then Chris was killed.’

After all, even totems can be human.

‘Yes. Oh God… Seeing that, seeing the Doc, working on someone he knew wasn’t going to make it right there alongside what was left of Chris’s body… Christ… How did he do it? I couldn’t have… Shit… Fucking shit… Think I’d have gone out of my mind…’

For long moments the pair of them sat together in silence, Sherlock processing this new data, his guest lost amongst the bloodied yellow sands of another time, another country.

Saved by the bell. Or at least by the bleep of a text on his Blackberry.

Lestrade.

‘I’m sorry, I have go.’

‘No, no. I’ve already taken up far too much of your time.’

‘You must come again. When John’s back.’

‘I don’t know…’

The stranger was already up and heading towards the staircase.

‘No, you must come. You need to see him and I think he probably needs to see you.’

Stump. Stump. Stump.

‘He might not…’

‘Of course he will!’

Stump. Stump. Stump.

‘It’s been a while, maybe it was a bad idea…’

‘It will be fine. I’ll make sure it is. You _will_ come.’

‘Well, if you insist…’

By now they were at the front door once again.

‘I do insist. And it will be fine. I’ll make sure you have time to yourselves. Erm… Sorry, I didn’t catch your name…’

‘Reynolds. Corporal George Reynolds. Well I was, once. Just George Reynolds now. And you?’

‘Holmes. Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Sherlock? Bloody hell…’

‘What?’

For a moment Reynolds shifted on his feet, adjusting his weight against his crutch.

‘Well, it’s just… Sherlock... That was Chris’s surname. Bit of a coincidence…’

Every kind of panic and terror that Sherlock has never before known raced through him in a single instant.

‘Mind you, the coincidence ends there.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Well, Chris was a Geordie, built like a tank. Redhead into the bargain. Probably pure Viking.’

‘Ah, I see… No… Just a coincidence then…’

‘Yeah. Funny one though.’

‘Indeed.’

Sherlock swallowed hard, swallowed away the fear that he was nothing more than a lost name.

‘Next Saturday. John’ll be back then. Come over around three. Come for tea. Though you’d better ring beforehand. We sometimes get, well, caught up in things.’

He scribbled down his number and passed it over.

‘You will come.’

An imperative, not a question.

‘Yes, I’ll come. Yeah, why not?’

‘Why not indeed.’

‘It’ll be good to see the Doc again.’

Sherlock couldn’t agree more.

They waved congenially as Reynolds nabbed the only black cab in sight in a Baker Street usually full of them. But that didn’t matter. Sherlock checked his phone once again for Lestrade’s latest demand and broke into a long loping run that would take in Bulstrode Street, down Welbeck, along Queen Anne’s, and deep into the labyrinthine internal map of central London that he carried within his mind.

After twenty yards he ran slap bang into an elderly lady and her tartan trolley.

Spinning her around he set her back on her feet as steady as she ever was and planted a smacker of a kiss upon her forehead.

‘John Watson!’ he yelled, ‘Doctor John Watson! He’s a bloody hero!’

Mrs Hudson retrieved her faithful tartan friend, patted her hair and giggled.

‘He’s not just a hero, he’s sainted angel to put up with you!’

But by then her joint favourite lodger of all time was already long out of sight.


End file.
